Generally, a refrigerator is a home appliance which keeps food in an internal storage space shielded by a door at a low temperature.
A recently released refrigerator includes an icemaker for making ice. The icemaker is provided in a freezing compartment or a refrigerating compartment according to refrigerator model. A bottom freezer refrigerator having a refrigerating compartment provided above a freezing compartment includes a rotation refrigerating compartment door and a drawer type refrigerating compartment door. According to refrigerator model, an icemaker may be mounted in a refrigerating compartment, a refrigerating compartment door or a freezing compartment.
As disclosed in Korean Patent Application No. 2011-0091800 filed by the applicants of the present invention, a product including an icemaker provided in a freezing compartment and an ice bank provided in a refrigerating compartment for storing ice is proposed. Such a refrigerator requires a transfer mechanism for transferring ice made by the icemaker to the ice bank and spherical ice is made in the icemaker in order to easily transfer ice.
In an ice making assembly having such a structure, a distance from the icemaker to the ice bank is significantly large and noise may occur in a process of transferring ice. A transfer device having large driving power should be provided in order to transfer ice from the icemaker to the ice bank.
In the icemaker disclosed in the above-described Patent Application, ice dropped to a transfer member is pushed by rotation of the transfer member and moved to an ice bank along an ice chute. Accordingly, when ice is first made, since ice is not delivered to the ice back until the ice chute is filled with ice, it takes considerable time for a user to obtain ice.
The ice chute should always be filled with ice on an ice transfer path in order to transfer newly made ice by the transfer member and to drop previously made ice from the ice chute to the ice bank.
In such a structure, since ice is always laid on the ice transfer path, spheres of ice being in contact with each other on the ice transfer path may melt and adhere to each other. The adhered spheres of ice may not be easily transferred or may not be dropped from the ice chute to the ice bank.
In addition, when the spheres of ice are not easily transferred, overload is applied to a transfer motor for rotating the transfer member, increasing power consumption.